What is meant by the rank of the scoring function here?
$\text{rank}(f((r,e)|u))$ in $A_t(u)$ means to compute the value of scoring function $f$ for all pairs $(r,e)\in A_t$ which are conditioned by $u$, then sort them in a descending order. The rank of the $f((r,e)|u)$ in this order is equal to $\text{rank}(f((r,e)|u))$. Hence $\text{rank}(f((r,e)|u)) \leqslant \alpha$ means to select the $\alpha$ top most scored pairs.